History Of Tamil language - the first language to orgin

The name 'Tamil' is a little differently pronounced anglicized version of the three letter native name of the Dravidian language spoken mainly by people of Tamilnadu, a state in the Indian subcontinent. It belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages. It is the official and administrative language of the State of Tamilnadu and the Union territory of Puduchery. It is one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of India.

From the pre-Christian days of the Indian cultural evolution it has gained the same prominence as the major northern languages, mainly Sanskrit. However it has maintained its tradition, uniqueness and identity as the expressive medium of a cultural community and earned the accolade of being the first Indian language to be declared as a Classical Language by the government of India in 2004. A classical language is defined to own a rich literature that is ancient with an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own. It has the credit of being one of the official languages in the countries of Sri Lanka and Singapore.

Tamil is also spoken by a significant minority in more than fifty five diaspora countries of the world including Malaysia and Mauritius.Malayalam, the native language of the neighbouring state of Kerala is considered as the closest major relative of Tamil and its resemblance to Tamil is so striking that it almost sounds like a variation of Tamil language. Until about the 9th century, Malayalam was a dialect of ancient Tamil, also known as Proto-Tamil. Some believe that Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam, apparently diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the 9th century onwards, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil.Tamil therefore, had a huge influence in the early development of Malayalam.

Origin

A few scholars have linked the origins of Tamil to that of Sanskrit. However, unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, the origins of Tamil are independent of Sanskrit. Tamil has the longest unbroken literary tradition amongst the four major Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam). The earliest known Tamil inscriptions date back to at least 500 BC. The oldest literary text in Tamil, Tolkappiyam, was composed around 200 BC. The Tamil alphabet is thought to have evolved from the Brahmi script, though some scholars believe that its origins go back to the Indus script.

Old Tamil (300 BCE-700 CE)

Short inscriptions supposedly relating to 2nd Century onwards, written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi, found in caves are the earliest records that stand in support of Old Tamil. The consonants, the syllable structure, and various grammatical forms are some of the many features of the Proto-Dravidian that the Old Tamil preserved. Just as in Proto-Dravidian, Old Tamil only had only two tenses, the past and the "non-past". Old Tamil verbs also had a distinct negative conjugation. Nouns could take pronominal suffixes like verbs to express ideas.

Middle Tamil (700-1200)

The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil by the 8th century, was characterized by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. The most important aspect was the emergence of the present tense. Middle Tamil also saw a significant increase in the Sanskritization of Tamil. From the period of the Pallava dynasty onwards, a number of words borrowed from Sanskrit found a place in Tamil. Likewise Sanskrit had also influenced Tamil grammar. The Tamil script too changed during the period of Middle Tamil. Tamil Brahmi and Vatteluttu, into which it evolved, were the main scripts used in Old Tamil inscriptions. From the 8th century onwards, however, a new script derived from the Pallava Grantha script which was used to write Sanskrit came to be used in place of Vatteluttu.

Modern Tamil (1600-Present)

Colloquial spoken Tamil, shows a number of changes from the Middle Tamil. Modern spo